1962 – Sindelfingen became a "Große Kreisstadt" (city with special governmental responsibilities within the larger county)
1971 – Municipal annexation of the neighbouring villagesMaichingen and Darmsheim
1987 – The final traditional SindelfingerVolksfest was held (the site was later required for a state-level horticulture and landscaping exhibition)
Theweaving industry survived until most of Europe's textile industry was devastated by Asian imports. Some textile distribution centres are still left in the city. Former weaving mills can still be found in the city area, now used as offices for the computer industry. This is due to the takeover ofHollerith byIBM which used thepunched card technology from the weaving mills.
Friendship Fountain on the market place, designed by Bonifatius Stirnberg.[5] Around a central fountain with the Pegasus are six small fountains representing the six partner towns of Sindelfingen. The figures can rotate.
Miniature Railway in the Sommerhofen Park
Powerline-branch Maichingen
Zweigart-Sawitzki-Bridge
High-based pylons
TV repeater Darmsheim
Transmitter Tower Fuchsberg
Transmitter Tower service area Forest of Sindelfingen
Sindelfingen has an annual International Street Fair which features ethnic food and performances from the partner cities, as well as from various local ethnic clubs.
The resident counts below are either estimates, based upon census (*) or official records of respective statistical offices. All figures after 1871 are taken from the statistical office of Baden-Württemberg.[6]
The factory was founded in 1915 byDaimler Motoren Gesellschaft to produce aircraft engines, hence the plant initially had a runway located onsite. Post-World War I the first passenger car was manufactured, following the merger withBenz & Cie. founded byKarl Benz. In 1926, the entire body shop of the new Daimler-Benz group was relocated to the Sindelfingen plant, allowing plant managerWilhelm Friedle to introduceassembly line production the following year, and in 1929 the first press shop was opened. By 1938 the plant employed about 6,500 people, and in the lead-in toWorld War II most production was aligned to military contracts, mainly trucks such as theLC 3000; passenger car production ceased by 1942. Initially replacing male workers with local women, Mercedes then tookforced labour, including prisoners of war. Western European prisoners were initially housed in near-by boarding houses, but with the start of the Eastern front the local Nazi administration formed the co-located Riedmühleconcentration camp, which from 1942 loaned workers to the company in return for payment to the Nazi Government inBerlin. By 1944, almost half of Daimler Benz's 63,610 Daimler Benz employees were civilian forced labourers. Post-WW2, Daimler-Benz admitted its links with the Nazi regime, and became involved in the German Industry Foundation's initiative "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future".[7]
With heavy Allied bombing, the town and plant were not suitably reconstructed until late 1946, with resumed production of theMercedes-Benz W136. Two-shift production was introduced from 1950, with the relocation of final car assembly to the plant, meaning that by 1955 80,500 cars were manufactured. TheMercedes-Benz W116 was first produced in 1972, the first model of theMercedes-Benz S-Class, which the plant still produces today as the current modelMercedes-Benz W223. Until 2015, the plant was the top-producing Daimler AG plant, when with 319,000 vehicles manufactured it was overtaken by theBremen plant with 324,000.
Today, covering 2,955,944 m2 with a production area of 1,305,557 m2, the 37,000 people employed (April 2016 – around 10,000 are research and development), the plant still produces over 300,000 vehicles per year, around 15% of total Daimler Group vehicle production. Second in production scale to Bremen in the Daimler Group, it is the third largest vehicle manufacturing plant in Germany, behindVolkswagen's Wolfsburg plant and theAudi plant atIngolstadt.
Sindelfingen can be reached through the A8 and A81 motorways, and through theS-Bahn connections to Stuttgart or Herrenberg. The nearest airport is theStuttgart Airport.
